Page 43 of Big Bad Wolfe

He glanced around the room. Obviously furnished on a budget, Jillian’s office reflected her personality. Unpretentious, comfortable, and cheerful. Children’s drawings in bright colors, dedicated with affection to Miss Jillian, nearly covered the yellow walls. Two overstuffed chairs upholstered in sapphire blue flanked a window that overlooked the grassy courtyard between the old building and the new addition on the other side. A scraggly dandelion bouquet in a paper cup decorated her desk, the wilted, brown-edged offerings of small earnest hands long past their prime, yet apparently too cherished to toss.

Next to the bouquet sat a shiny red frame holding a picture of Casey, Deb, and Jillian at Halloween. Deb wore a furry Ewok costume, Casey cut a dashing figure as Han Solo, and Jillian looked damned cute and surprisingly regal as Princess Leia. Zane dropped his gaze from the trio’s happy faces and forced his focus back to the computer.

He didn’t find anything out of the ordinary on his first pass, not that he expected to. He emailed some files to his laptop to delve more deeply into at home. He then moved on to updating the Center’s files, keeping at least part of his cover story intact.

Richard phoned four more times, but Jillian routed the calls directly to voicemail. She also received two blocked-number hang-up calls.

The Center was serving lunch at eleven, then closing after lunchtime recess today to accommodate the construction schedule. Jillian took pity on Zane and told him he could head to the cafeteria and grab his meal before the kids swarmed in, then eat it in the relative peace of the office. Of course she chose to eat with the pint-sized mob.

Perversely, as hard as he’d fought her presence all morning, he missed her during his solo meal.

About an hour after he’d eaten, Jillian came to get him and they walked outside to find Casey. The raucous noise hit Zane long before the playground came into view. Shrieking children ran back and forth across the grassy space, attacking the swings, teeter-totters, and jungle gym.

Zane shuddered.Holy shit.They were blasting enough decibels to out-wail an F-16 screaming down a runway. And the playground not only looked and sounded like a zoo after feeding time, it smelled like one.

Wearing a blue helmet, Casey stood in front of the chain link fence surrounding the baseball diamond. He hovered at home plate with a bat perched on his shoulder, a group of boys clustered behind him awaiting their turn. The pitcher threw the ball over the plate, but instead of taking a swing, Casey flinched back. The same thing happened twice more before the ump called Casey out.

“Casey!” Jillian yelled over the noisy throng. “Over here!”

The little boy dejectedly tugged off his helmet and dropped it, then picked up his mitt and trudged to join them. “Hi Aunt Jelly. Hi Zane. I guess ya saw me strike out, huh?”

Jillian knelt, swept the child into a hug and kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry about it. Derek Jeter struck out plenty on his way to fame.” She shot Zane a wry look. “Casey’s a Yankees fan, thanks to my dad.”

Casey’s mouth drooped. “Uncle Richard yells at me when I strike out. He says only babies and cowards are scared of the ball.”

Anger hotter than the glaring August sun beat at Zane. He squatted to the child’s level. “That’s not true. When I was your age, I used to be afraid of the ball myself. But I grew up to pitch championship games in college.”

“You were? You did?” Casey’s eyes widened hopefully. “How did ya learn not to be scared?”

When Zane was six, Stoneheart had made him stand in front of the backyard fence, and hit him with stinging pitch after pitch until pain and fury had eclipsed fear. He could still hear the low taunts.“C’mon, be a man. A little old softball never hurt anybody. Suck it up, crybaby.”

He’d sported bruises for weeks afterward.

Two years later, Trevor had received the same “cure”.

Zane banished the barbed memory. “Everybody’s scared of new things at first. Anyone who says he’s not is flat-out lying. You just need extra practice at home, and you’ll be fine.”

Casey hung his head. “I got nobody to practice with at home. My uncles are SEALS … not the fish-eating kind, the Navy kind. And Poppy’s burst-itis shoulder bugs him when he pitches. He says it’s even why he has to stuper— Wait, what’s that word he said?Supervisehis crew more nowadays. That means watch them more instead of using the tools himself.”

“That’s too bad.”

Don’t get involved.

“And even though Aunt Jelly triesrealhard, she throws all crooked and squiggly.”

“True,” Jillian admitted. “Unfortunately, ‘pitch like a girl’ totally applies in my case.”

Zane gritted his teeth against the impulse to speak.

Don’t say it, chump.

But dammit, the kid looked so unhappy, and it was the least he could do. “How about if you and I toss the ball around sometime?” he heard himself blurt.

“Really?” Casey’s face lit up, making Zane suddenly feel ten feet tall. “That’d be awesome!”

Jillian offered Zane a glowing smile that punched him in the chest harder than any baseball. “C’mon you two. We’d better get home.” Navigating the maze of screeching children, they zigzagged across the grass toward the parking lot. “Thank you, Zane.” she whispered.

“No biggie,” he muttered. “I offered to play a little catch with the kid. Doesn’t mean anything.”

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